Millennial Shopping: Driven By Prices

I'm happy to learn that a surprising amount of money is spent on clothing, seeing as I definitely add to this statistic. As the online shopping world expands, so does the amount of money spent online. Millennials make up a large amount of consumers in the online shopping world. According to Nielsen.com, "shopping for apparel is a regular and frequent activity for most U.S consumers." 

College students are no exception. With modern technology expanding, online shopping can be as easy as a click of a button (or screen in the case of iPhones.) Online stores make the purchasing process user-friendly and they allow consumers to simply select the items they want, and check out in a matter of seconds. You can store your address and credit card number in your phone's memory to make purchasing your items easy and convenient. Companies are figuring out ways to make online shopping exciting and something consumers want to do frequently. Perhaps this is why shopping is so common these days!

Richard Kestenbaum, a contributor to Forbes.com, wrote an article explaining why millennial shopping is so important. As of June 2017, there were 80 million millennials. Together they spent $600 billion dollars annually. The prices of clothing is extremely important for millennials because "almost 80% are influenced by price. Even as much as they are looking for other values from their products" some of which include, "authenticity, local sourcing, ethical production and a great shopping experience, nothing beats a discount no matter how old you are." 

According to Kestenbaum, the topic of brands is very prevalent in this day and age, "A majority of millennials follow brands on at least one social media platform" because they want discounts. "Two-thirds of millennials say they will switch brands if they are offered a discount of 30% or more." Discounts are frequently used when purchasing clothing. Kestenbaum notes that 72% of millennials spend an average of 3 minutes looking for a coupon before making an online purchase. While "that may not sound like a lot" of time, "online shopping is meant to be fast, simple and easy, three minutes of searching for coupons is significant and clearly an important motivator." 

The main takeaway here is the millennial shopping habits are something to pay attention to. We want shopping to be fun, easy, quick, and most importantly, cheap!